Hi Manny,
On 9/14/06, manny <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Wed, 13 Sep 2006, Dean Michael Berris wrote:
> At any rate, I still maintain that this bill (however good looking it
> may seem) is a needless headache for the legislative office of _any_
> congressman. I still stand by my (personal) view that the Philippines
> produce quality FOSS first, then think about using _just_FOSS_ later.
> Let's make software that's of high enough quality first then worry
> about FOSS later.
That makes no sense. The two are NOT mutually exclusive.
Hmmm... Even if there is no (or very little) Filipino FOSS to be made
available to the government, it can be promoted and draconianly be
required in all the government agencies.
It's like requiring every government agency to put up a neon sign
outside their buildings -- it's needless, and it's a waste of time.
We can do both at
thje same time.
Of course, we can. But what's the point? I think... [see reply below
marked "continued"]
To saty we should delay one to promote the other is really
engaging in a logical fallacy.
The proposition is, that we should *NOT* worry about FOSS in the
government _yet_ (or promoting it further via legislation) because as
I've already stated, it's needless. We should prove to ourselves first
that we can come up with quality software first before even thinking
about making the government use the software "touted to be more
stable, reliable, and more robust the current commercial software
solutions".
There's no reason why BOTH cannot be
pursued concurrently.
Of course. We can talk the talk, and keep talking the talk and not
walk the walk. We advocate the use of FOSS in government and let's
require government to use it -- but are we ourselves _producing_ the
"quality FOSS" that government requires?
There is, however, a good reason why we should not
delay FOSS adoption in government: we're wasting money on propiretayr,
overpriced solutions that often sacrifice security and trap government
agencies with vendor lock-in.
[continued]
what government needs is just Free as in Free Beer software, and not
Free as in Freedom. What the government needs is cheap software, and
very little to nonexistent support. What it needs is to scrap the
computers (because they cost too much) and go back to the days of
paper and pencil because it can't afford to waste more money on
software. And forget about Open Source or "source available" software
that comes at a cost, government doesn't want to pay.
If the idea was to save on cost, then FOSS is not the answer. There
are more effective means of cutting down on cost and increasing
revenue to cover for expenses -- and belt tightening is one of them.
Removing the pork barrel is another, but I digress.
I maintain, that unless the people who draft the bill have an idea as
to what FOSS is about and that the Philippines can develop the
software that its own government needs, worrying about using FOSS or
Commercially Obtained Proprietary Software is a needless headache.
--
Dean Michael C. Berris
C++ Software Architect
Orange and Bronze Software Labs, Ltd. Co.
web: http://software.orangeandbronze.com/
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
mobile: +63 928 7291459
phone: +63 2 8943415
other: +1 408 4049532
blogs: http://mikhailberis.blogspot.com http://3w-agility.blogspot.com
http://cplusplus-soup.blogspot.com
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